The return of the popes to Rome was the beginning of a new act in the great drama of Italian mediæval history. Deserting their proper capital, they had left it for above a century a prey to faction, strife, and rapine, which there was no authority to control, nor any holier influence to modify. The example of such disorganisation spread through the Peninsula, and aggravated dissension in all its cities. In absence of the papal court, the gloom of a dark age again brooded over the ecclesiastical states, for the few sparks of learning had been carried by emigrant churchmen to Provence. But, with its restoration, Rome became once more the metropolis of Christendom, and Italy began to feel that kindling glow, which, radiating from its centre, disseminated the cheering light and healthful flush of knowledge and civilisation over the globe. In one respect, however, and that a material one, was the position of the papacy altered. The protracted scandal of recent repeated schisms had shaken men's reliance on its infallibility; the fierce bickerings between popes and anti-popes, hurling anathemas and bandying abuse, had raised in the spectators a doubt if their cause could be more sacred than their weapons. The days when an emperor would hold the stirrup for a successor of St. Peter were passed away. Nor were affairs altogether satisfactory as regarded the domestic security of the latter. The dread of again losing their sovereign court formed a convenient check upon the factious citizens of Rome; but the barons of the Campagna were restless neighbours and turbulent vassals, and though the Gaetani and Frangipani were no longer formidable, the Savelli, the Orsini, and the Colonna by turns carried fire and sword into each other's holdings, or scoured the streets of Rome itself in their forays. To assert an effectual jurisdiction over the province immediately surrounding their capital, and to maintain their waning influence abroad, became the two great objects of successive pontiffs during the fifteenth century: one of these was perhaps a painful necessity, the other originated a policy ruinous to Italy; both occasioned frequent appeals to carnal weapons, pregnant with mischief to the Holy See.